


honey-sweet and butterscotch-rich

by simplyclockwork



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Fluff and vague smut, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Poetic Sappery, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, Sherlock Holmes Loves John Watson, pure fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:08:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27331711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyclockwork/pseuds/simplyclockwork
Summary: Sherlock's poetic devotion to his gold-spun man of war.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 34
Kudos: 83
Collections: Happy_Birthday_2020, Sherlock and John Stories that Ease the Soul





	honey-sweet and butterscotch-rich

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PatPrecieux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PatPrecieux/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [На вкус сладкий, как карамель](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27433009) by [Little_Unicorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Little_Unicorn/pseuds/Little_Unicorn)



> Happiest of birthdays to the most wonderful PatPrecieux, who welcomed me back to the fandom over a year ago with her lovely comments, humour, brilliant writing, and dedicated reading. Fandom wouldn't be the same without your beautiful presence. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy this fluffy little ficlet, just for you! 
> 
> Thank you for being you, and happy, happy birthday ♥️🥳

In the early morning light, John is spun-gold, greying hair turned saffron by the sun, and the silver at his temples burning white in the yellow glow suffusing the bedroom. Watching him is like watching a miracle, the birth of a star, the whisper of life on a sea salt breeze.

Sherlock lays his arms over John’s chest and sets his chin atop the shelf they make, studying John’s face in slumber. The lines at the corners of his eyes soften in sleep with his thin lips parted just enough to reveal the faintest peek of a pink tongue. He is honey-sweet and butterscotch-rich, skin the colour of burnished brass and pale cedar swirled together in permanent pigmentation damage from the Afghan sun.

Poets might say Sherlock’s observations are rooted in a deep-seated love. Movies might refer to him as twitter-pated, head-over-heels, utterly lost on the man slumbering beneath him. The terms are inadequate, as is the word _love._ What he feels is both a tangible response to a chemical cocktail of synaptic expression and a gut feeling of serendipity—nothing more, and certainly nothing less.

John is the axis upon which Sherlock turns, his focus point, the central hub to his spokes. He is fire and water and the air in Sherlock’s lungs, and the ground beneath his feet when the world quakes and Sherlock’s balance shifts. They’ve been through madness together. They’ve been torn apart, torn asunder, brought back in pieces and broken shards. Their jagged edges fit together in unexpected ways, the two of them shaped into puzzle pieces that never meshed with anyone else.

John is the South to his magnetic North. Polarized, pulled together, proven.

Watching him grows unbearable. Any universe where Sherlock Holmes exists without John Watson is not worth discovering, and the moments when John drifts out of his reach twist Sherlock’s heart into knots.

He rises onto his hands, upper body hovering over John’s, easing himself slowly down until they are chest-to-chest. John stirs, eyes moving beneath his eyelids as he floats to the edge of sleep.

Sherlock tilts his head to kiss sleepy lips, brushing tender over warm skin and tasting John’s soft exhale. The next breath brings John’s arms around him, palms slipping over the curve of Sherlock’s spine, up the sharp blades of his shoulders, fingers dipping into sleep-mussed curls as John stirs. Sherlock’s kiss turns persistent, John’s lips responding, moving with his in glacial, sweet pressure.

Sherlock is ravenous, and he devours the sounds John makes as he wakes. The soft sighs and pleased murmurs, the stuttering exhale that slips into a moan when he tugs John’s upper lip into his mouth.

They kiss and stir, and the sun slips honey-thick over their bare skin, setting them both alight. Sherlock presses his lips to the underside of John’s jaw, tastes the salty musk of his neck with his sweeping tongue. He kisses morning breath and eager-to-please whispers of _good morning_ along warm collar bones and inhales John’s sleepy _hello_.

They wake like the unfurling of a flower. Their languid movements are the parting of petals; the humming, singing, eager song of their blood is the buzzing of pollination. In bloom, they wilt into one another in a parody of perfection, opening and separating in the dance of bodies, joined together at mouth and hip, hand and waist.

The rising sun spreads molten over sweat-kissed skin, and Sherlock tastes the winsome smile on John’s curled lips. North becomes South with polarity interchanged between the brush of their tongues, the curve of Sherlock’s neck, the groan rumbling through John’s chest.

Sherlock’s lips spread sweet and cinnamon-spicy words of devotion over golden shoulders, and the sunrise echoes the perpetual supernova caught in John’s sea-swept eyes.

Even with all the complex, unanswered questions echoing through the universe, the crimes waiting to be committed and solved, there is nowhere else Sherlock would rather be.


End file.
